SDSU's new coach

Quote: “She possesses a tremendous will to win, and an intensity and drive to build our program the right way," SDSU Athletic Director Jim Sterk said.

While other schools have considered cutting sports because of economic troubles, San Diego State is moving forward with plans to add a new program: women’s lacrosse.

On Friday, SDSU announced the hiring of Kylee White as the head coach for its new women’s lacrosse team, which plans to begin a limited schedule in the spring of 2012.

Women’s lacrosse will be the 19th athletics program at SDSU: 13 for women, six for men.

SDSU is adding lacrosse and planning to add a women’s sand volleyball team in order to comply with California State University gender equity requirements.

In 2008, a CSU report said SDSU had been more than 6 percent under its female scholarship target rate the previous two years. The target rate for CSU schools is to be within five percentage points of the proportion of NCAA-eligible female and male undergraduates. SDSU’s undergraduate population recently has been about 57 percent female, but SDSU’s scholarship allocation is about 127 in 12 sports for women, and 128.6 in six sports for men, including 85 for football.

The CSU requirements put SDSU in a jam because it needed to either add women’s sports or reduce its men’s scholarships. SDSU already has the Division I minimum of six men’s sports, so cutting those was ruled out.

By starting two new women's teams, SDSU would add about 20 new scholarships for women: 12 for lacrosse and around eight for "sand volleyball," an emerging NCAA sport.

But to add new teams, SDSU had to find money for them first. Like other schools, SDSU has been facing economic pressure. It has been subsidizing nearly half of its $32 million athletics budget with student fees, taxpayer and university funding.

SDSU President Stephen Weber’s solution for this was a student fee increase of $160 per year, starting this year. The school estimated that the fee increase could raise $4.5 million, about $1 million of which could fund the new teams.

White previously served as an assistant at Loyola University in Baltimore and was a three-time member of Canadian World Cup teams.

She’ll shepherd a rare effort these days in college athletics -- the addition of a new program. Meanwhile, at Cal, a chancellor’s committee there has recommended the university consider cutting five to seven of the Bears’ 27 sports to relieve financial pressure.